Feds shut down flight-school fundraiser for ‘Barefoot Bandit’

SEATTLE — A man who became known as the “Barefoot Bandit” during a teenage crime spree in stolen cars, boats and planes had his flight-school fundraiser grounded by federal probation officials.

Colton Harris-Moore, who grew up on Camano Island, started a GoFundMe page to raise more than $125,000 for private and commercial pilot-license training and helicopter certification.

“Now I am 25 years old, free, and ready to do it (fly) LEGALLY!” he wrote on the page. “I love airplanes, but I will never steal one or break the law again. I broke the law big league when I was younger, but now it’s time to focus on my career and life in the free world.”

Harris-Moore’s nine-state, three-country crime spree grabbed international attention when he broke into homes and businesses and stole cars, boats and airplanes before his July 2010 arrest in the Bahamas. In 2012, he was sentenced to seven years in prison. In September, he earned work release and now lives in Seattle.

Harris-Moore still owes victims of his crimes about $129,000 in restitution.

“He is not allowed to have a GoFundMe account to fund his wish to go to flying school when the victims aren’t whole,” Connie Smith, chief U.S. probation and pretrial officer for Western Washington, told The Seattle Times. “The money in that GoFundMe account will need to go to victims.”

On the GoFundMe page, Harris-Moore professed a love of flying — while conceding it got the better of him.

“I have decided to go against my instinct to not be public, and instead open this project and my goal to the world,” Harris-Moore wrote. “My goal is, of course, to fly!

“When I was 17, I actually stole an airplane — a 1997 Cessna 182S … I was willing to die for the experience of flight.”

Harris-Moore said he had raised about $1,600 and tweeted that his “dream has been crushed.”

I feel like my dream has been crushed. What a terrible feeling.

— Colton Harris Moore (@realColtonX) December 20, 2016

But he said that he plans to challenge the probation office in court.

“It’s either this or you sit around for a couple decades as I make pennies toward these payments,” he said. “This isn’t a whimsical thing I want to do on the weekend for personal pleasure. This is my career.

“The training I have laid out will allow me to earn the career I dream of &be able to pay rest of restitution much fast than otherwise,” Harris-Moore said on Twitter.